


Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [38]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:47:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26111359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Vinnie makes some amends.
Series: The Roadhouse Blues [38]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713





	Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god

Port Authority was just the way Vinnie remembered it—and it was practically around the corner from the Empire State Building. Without really thinking about it, Vinnie found he had decided to get on a westbound bus.

For all of Sonny's well-laid plans, he'd forgotten about Vinnie's car, and the money in his safety deposit box. Maybe he's planning on shipping me the car. _He could send it to Frank's address, along with my clothes, and a check for the amount of money Rudy sent me._ Vinnie hadn't touched that money, and Sonny knew it, but even if he had, even if he'd spent it down to where there was nothing but a penny or two in the safety deposit box, Sonny would send him the full amount. Sonny loved a problem he could throw money at.

Of course, Sonny didn't know about the money Roger had given him. Vinnie almost wished he did, wished he had a key so he could go and clean it out and find all that money. Not that it would be much fun without Vinnie there to watch his reaction.

So Vinnie was going to have to go back to San Francisco, at least to get that damned money and give it to some deserving organization, the Girl Scouts, or the Salvation Army, or maybe the starving Armenians.

Why his first thought should be to take the bus, Vinnie didn't know. Maybe it was because the bus was cheaper, or maybe it was because he wasn't in that big a hurry to get back to Sonny.

_Am I going back to Sonny?_

He really didn't know.

Hence, the no big hurry.

_And if I did go back, who says he'd let me through the front door?_

Well, that was just a stupid question. Sonny would let him in because—

Because Sonny flat-out adored him.

Vinnie didn't want to think about that. As much as he loved the way it felt having Sonny love him like that, he hated how it made him feel to think about it; it made him feel tired, which was the language his body translated guilt into to make it bearable. It wasn't that he didn't love Sonny. Sonny just wasn't—

Maybe it wasn't that there was something lacking in Sonny, but that there was something lacking in **him.**

But Vinnie still didn't want to think about it.

He had enough money to get on a plane—to get onto a plane for just about any place he wanted to go. But a plane to where?

A plane would get him to San Francisco faster, but what was the point of that? **Was** he going back to Sonny? And if he didn't know, why hurry back?

If he took the bus, it would give him some time to think. But Vinnie had done the cross-country route to death, even if leaving the driving to Greyhound would get him there in a few days instead of the three years it took with Sonny. And if all he was doing was getting his car and money, he'd be doing even more driving, unless he wanted to settle in San Francisco, which he didn't think he did.

_The first thing you've got to do is stop looking at your life as though every question is binary: stay in New York or go to California, like there's nothing in between. We saw a lot of that in between, and there are lives there, just not with Sonny. And I haven't decided I'm going back to him._

_Yeah, sure I haven't. Remember Karnovsky from Psych 101: nobody stands in the grocery store staring at the brussels sprouts and saying, 'I don't want those.' It's only the things we really do want, and are conflicted about, that we try to talk ourselves out of. If you can't stay away from the subject, you're coming back to it for a reason. Well, Sonny's a subject I've never been able to stay away from. Is there any question what the reason is?_

Vinnie went to the men's room to check his wallet. Never flash your cash in public, his father had always told him, so going to a stall the men's room to count his money had become a habit—such a habit that he had a tendency to count his money in the bathroom at home, which amused Sonny.

Not only did he have cash—the hundreds Sonny had given him as a lovely parting gift were just the icing on the cake, since he'd already been carrying nearly a thousand of his own—he still had one of Sonny's credit cards, a fact that made him laugh out loud. Vinnie wondered what Sonny's reaction would be if he used it to fly back to him—or even better, if he used it **not** to fly back to him, to relocate, a little cash advance for a deposit on an apartment, and then some furniture shopping. Vinnie had no idea how high Sonny's credit limit was, but he was sure he could furnish an entire apartment from Goodwill and the Salvation Army—which would make Sonny far crazier than if he spent a couple thousand times that much at some fancy designer furniture place.

Vinnie came out of the stall, washed his hands, and went in search of the one thing in the world Frank and Sonny agreed he needed: a barber. Sonny had made him shave the day before, but he hadn’t had a haircut in—Vinnie wasn’t sure how long he hadn’t had a haircut in. A long time. And he needed another shave anyway.

_Sonny made you shave because he was giving you back to Frank, so you had to be clean and looking like he’d been taking good care of you. Jesus._

It was kind of ironic that now that he felt he could look in a mirror with no trouble, Vinnie had come up with the (obvious) solution to his shaving problem. The barber kept talking to him the whole time he worked, but it was a lot like being at the dentist: he wasn't expected to answer. Instead Vinnie was wondering, with no plan of actually doing so, how long he could live on Sonny's dime before Sonny cut off that particular credit card. And then he realized that he could probably live on it forever, as long as he didn't start buying yachts and racehorses—

No, yachts and racehorses would probably be all right. It would be when he started shopping at Goodwill that the credit would suddenly run dry. Sonny wasn't the kind of guy who'd let himself be taken for a ride, but then Vinnie wasn't the kind of guy who wanted to go for a ride. If Vinnie were to do it, if Sonny were to allow it, it would be—

_What would it be?_

_It would be Sonny taking care of me, because somehow Sonny, like Frank, has the idea that I’m his responsibility. With Frank it made sense—the OCB had **told** Frank that I was his responsibility; that was his job, until it wasn't. Here, this is Vincent Michael Terranova, he's your responsibility. Don't let him get himself killed._

But that didn't explain Sonny.

_Get serious, does anything in the known universe explain Sonny?_

_This isn't getting you any closer to either an explanation or the West Coast. If you’re going to the West Coast. Before you go anyplace, you have to make a decision._

But it had been a long time since he’d made one of those, one that really mattered. Sonny had told Frank he didn’t make decisions anymore. Frank had thought that was a comment on his character or something, but Vince knew it was simply descriptive: he **didn’t** make decisions anymore. He had to start again.

The barber was finished with him. Vinnie paid him, giving him a tip Sonny would have approved of.

Vinnie hadn't thought of it, but his stomach had: what he needed now was something to eat. That was easy enough; even at his least competent, Vinnie’d known how to feed himself, and where to find food. Now he found a hamburger place that his nose liked. He got a couple of burgers with the works, french fries, a vanilla shake, and sat at a table looking at it. If he wanted to keep eating like this, he was going to **have** to go back to Sonny, either that or he was really going to pork up. _Or you could just work out on your own. You know how to do that, too. You don’t need Sonny to stay in shape, you just like it better with him._ As it was, he'd put on more weight than he needed—though his reflection in the barber's mirror hadn't made him wince. Just trying to keep up with Sonny's endless energy was good for him.

Frank had hollered at him, of course, and that had been hard, but it would have been worse if Frank hadn't hollered at him. A Frank who didn't yell at you was a Frank who didn't care about you. From all the yelling Frank did, Vinnie knew Frank still loved him a lot. And Frank had told him he could do anything he wanted, but he'd also told him something else without realizing it. Or maybe it wasn't without realizing it, Frank was really good at this. What he'd told Vince, without saying the words, was, grow up.

Vinnie could see himself on the bus from New York to California, could see every mile. What he couldn't see was what happened when he got there, when he got off the bus, and went to the apartment. Would Sonny let him in? Would he have changed the locks?

No, Sonny wouldn't change the locks, Sonny would just move. Let dimwit Terranova walk into an empty apartment, or better yet, barge in on strangers, and then let him try to explain himself. _He's gotta be glad to be rid of you, anybody stupid enough to buy those lame stories he told—needed to come back East for business reasons . . . not taking you to the meeting "just in case" . . . and don't forget giving you a grand in cash, just to blow, have some fun with._ "What the hell was I thinking? That's easy—I wasn't, not about what Sonny was saying. I was thinking about Frank, about being so close, I could . . . ."

Seeing Frank had done his heart good, no question about that. It felt incredible, to be able to breathe, to think, without feeling guilty over Frank, without worrying over him. He looked at the pay phone on the wall across from where he sat with the remains of his dinner, and felt no desire to pick it up; it didn't tempt him at all. He was free.

_Free to do what?_

_Yeah, good question._

He couldn't see himself back in the apartment with Sonny. What he saw instead was himself in Arizona, talking to Rudy. It was absolutely the last thing in the world he wanted to do, with the exception of being dragged off by guys speaking Spanish. It wasn't necessary, it was—

It was absolutely necessary. If he was going to be a grown-up, he had to act like one. Rudy had forgiven him, but he hadn't forgotten—he was a lot like Sonny in that way. And that led to the completely bizarre and unwanted thought that it would not make his mother happy know that, in certain respects, her son had the same taste in men that she did. Fortunately she would never find out.

He couldn't see his mother, and not just because it would get Rudy in dutch with her, not just because it would open up a whole can of worms. He couldn't see her because she no more existed in his world than he existed in hers. The last thing he wanted to do was upset the balance of the universe. She was better off with a dead hero for a son, instead of one who was broken and unusable.

 _Are we starting this again?_ Sonny's voice, in that tone of, _if you're going to start feeling sorry for yourself, I'm going to the movies._

Maybe it was self-pity. But if he wanted to be pragmatic about it, it didn't matter. It didn't matter if his mother thought he was dead, it didn't matter if—the past didn't matter. His whole entire past didn't matter, it was gone, it was not coming back. Whether that was good, bad, indifferent—it didn't matter. He had to stop looking back there.

But first he had to pay one last debt.

Apparently you could just walk in with a wallet full of money and a phony I. D., and buy yourself a plane ticket to Phoenix. That was good to know.

But Vinnie didn't go right from Port Authority to the airport. If he was leaving New York for good—and it certainly seemed that way—he wanted to do something before he went.

He went back out on the street with his new haircut, and his full stomach, and started walking. It had stopped raining, but there was still quite a breeze. It felt good to be walking. For that matter, it felt good to be cold. You could get cold in San Francisco, but not in any way that seemed to count; when San Francisco was cold, it didn't seem very sure of itself, it didn't seem to mean it. It wasn’t anything like New York where, when was cold, it could kill you without even noticing.

Vinnie was supposed to be doing something, but he wasn't sure what. Something significant, something ceremonial, something that said goodbye. It would have been nice if he'd known just what that was, just what he wanted to do.

Well, there were a lot of things he **wanted** to do—he wanted to check on Susan, he wanted to see Angie. He thought about going out to the cemetery, taking flowers for his father and brother and Danny. He thought about driving past Amber's place, but what if she saw him? Not that she'd tell anyone if she saw him and knew it was him, but it would be a mean trick just to ease his own mind. Amber was fine without him, and had been since before his disappearance. Let her mourn, if she was mourning, and let her move on.

Vinnie even thought about checking on Theresa, for Sonny's sake, but what would he find? A woman perfectly capable of looking out for herself. She loved Sonny, but she hardly needed him. _Even if I did check on her, I could never tell Sonny about it._

He even thought about renting a car and driving to AC, to take a last look at the summit from which the rest of his life felt like a downhill race, but that just felt like more self-pity. Besides, the Royal Diamond wasn't the Royal Diamond any more. Some big corporation had bought it and changed the name. Did Sonny know that? Probably.

_Everybody's got a new name now._

And driving past his old house—the house didn't feel the same, not since Rudy had kept him there, trying to fix his head. When your own home feels like purgatory, it's not home anymore.

So he ended up walking to St. Pat's and sticking some of Sonny's money into the little boxes, lighting all the candles as though it was an enormous birthday cake. His brother had said prayer was not for sale, but he hadn't added that candles cost money, and the Church had to pay for them just like everyone else.

Then Vinnie knelt to pray, first for his brother, then his father, and Danny, his uncle Dom who had had a stroke two years ago (Sonny read him the obituary—it was handy living with a newspaper junkie). Then he prayed for the family he'd lost but who were still living: Frank. Uncle Mike. Paul Beckstead, and Mark Cermak. His mother, and Angie, his stepfather, his aunts, and cousins. "I miss you," he told Pete.

Vinnie'd perfected the fifteen minute rosary when he was in grade school and his mother would send him to his room to "pray to God, and think about what you've done." He said three of them, ticking the decades on his fingers. Then his knees started complaining, and he got up, and left the church.

If he was going to see Rudy, Vinnie didn't want to show up looking like he needed money. He walked until he found a good men's clothing store and picked out an expensive new medium cashmere suit in a blue so dark it was nearly black. He looked good in it, and he felt good in it, and he was about to pay for it with Sonny's credit card—because he knew it would make Sonny laugh when he saw it on the statement—when he realized that he wasn't quite finished shopping. He'd done this enough times with Sonny to know it wasn't enough to buy a new suit—and why buy one when you can buy two? Vinnie picked out new everything, from the skin out, and left his old clothes to be disposed of properly, everything but his boots and his leather jacket, which were new—newish, anyway—and presents from Sonny. The boots didn’t go with his new suit, and he was directed down the street a block, where he bought a good pair of black shoes.

One good New York Italian meal later he was on his way to the airport.

The first thing to surprise Vinnie was how well-rested and fit Rudy looked. _Yeah, he hasn't been pining away for you like Frank was,_ although Frank hadn't looked bad either, just tired and anxious. _It's amazing how the world goes on without you, isn't it?_

The second thing that surprised him was Rudy hugging him. Not as hard as Frank had done, but still, there was real affection in that embrace. _He loves you, you idiot. Look at everything he's done for you. Yeah, and it wasn't all for my mother—in fact, if it had been for my mother, he'd've handed me back to her the second he had me, like a butterfly on a pin. "Look what I've got for you." Like a houseplant. "Can't find anybody to water you while I'm gone." Sonny's words. Shut up._

Rudy was studying him, looking for signs of—abuse? Neglect? Depression, suicidal impulses? But Vinnie knew he looked fine, maybe the best he had since the wedding. Rudy had seen him looking worse.

When he'd gotten to the hotel, Vinnie’d fallen into bed and slept, woke up a few hours later, took off his shoes, and fell back to sleep. When he woke up the second time, late morning was edging up on early afternoon. He got up, took a shower, and for an instant, wondered what he was going to put on, since he’d slept in his nice, new suit.

But he had two nice, new suits, and socks, and shirts, and underwear. Maybe Sonny’s philosophy really did make sense this time. He got dressed, then sent the slept-in clothes out to be pressed. After that, he called room service for breakfast. He hadn't had anything to eat since the peanuts on the plane.

The plane ride had been weird; Vinnie had found himself staring at the stewardesses, wondering if he'd ever slept with any of them, wondering if one of them would recognize him, wondering if Sonny had picked one up on his trip home. _What the hell do I care?_ he wondered, and really, he didn't, only—

The brunette looked like Sonny's type. Vinnie had ordered himself to stop thinking about things like that, but it hadn't helped much. He got a look at her nametag, but that didn't help either; he wasn't sure he'd recognize the names of any of the girls Sonny had brought home. _What would happen if **I** walked in with a couple of flight attendants, huh?_

Vinnie waited until he was fed and clothed before he called Rudy, which made it mid-afternoon when he started dialing. He had no idea what his mother did with her time, but he hoped he didn't have to resort to making hang-up calls just to get a hold of his stepfather.

He didn't. Rudy answered, and his voice betrayed nothing as he took the information Vinnie gave him: the name and room number of his hotel, and the fact that he was fine. If Rudy was going to have pretend he was a wrong number, better not to talk long.

"Your mother is out," Rudy said, sounding amused. "But I appreciate your brevity."

Vinnie had a pang of—not regret, exactly. Loss. Though he'd had no intention of talking to her, though he hadn't seen her in years, somehow Rudy telling him she wasn't there on the other end of the telephone line made him feel her absence more profoundly than he had since he couldn't remember when. And, simultaneously he'd gotten a jolt of nostalgia. Make-believe phone calls had once been part of his daily life.

"Are you planning to be in town long?" Rudy asked, and Vinnie thought he might have asked it once already without Vinnie noticing.

"My plans are indefinite,” Vinnie said. “But I would like to see you, if it's convenient."

And so Rudy had come to his hotel.

Vinnie had ordered tea from room service, and some kind of almond and hazelnut cookies, which he privately decided to get more of after Rudy left, which was what kept him from eating all of them before Rudy arrived.

"Vincenzo." There was a great deal of formality in the Italian form of Vinnie’s name, but not in the way Rudy said it. He'd once told Vinnie how much he liked the way Italian names felt when he said them, and Vincenzo was a good one. If Rudy didn't know what Vinnie wanted, he kept his uncertainty to himself. And though Vinnie wasn't entirely sure what he wanted either—except to apologize, and that seemed a little bald-faced to start with—he wasn't nervous. Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, he really liked Rudy again.

"How are you?" Vinnie asked, pulling out a chair for him. "How's my mother?"

"We're both well," Rudy said, nodding his thanks, sitting down. Vinnie sat down across from him. "Your mother goes to Mass every morning, to pray for you, and your brother."

Vinnie nodded. "I could use it."

"You look well," Rudy said, and that wasn't idle conversation. He had been looking intently at Vinnie ever since he opened the door.

"I **am** well," Vinnie said. "Probably don't get enough exercise, probably eat a little too well, but other than that, I'm great."

Rudy sipped his tea. "I was surprised by your call," he said in what had to be the understatement of the year.

"It was spontaneous," Vinnie said. He felt like laughing, which was completely inappropriate, but this courteous facade somehow seemed hilarious. And there was something about Rudy’s expression that seemed to say he felt the same way. Still, they kept it up, because that was the way things were done.

"You're here alone?" Rudy asked.

 _Ah, we won't be mentioning Sonny's name at all._ "I'm here alone," he agreed. "I'm traveling alone."

"Traveling alone?" Rudy looked politely surprised.

"I had some things I needed to settle of back East." That sounded ridiculous, so Vinnie said it more plainly. "I saw Frank." He did not say, Frank had more trouble coming to terms with the idea of my being dead than my mother did because, well, he didn't want to put Rudy in that position, and what would be the point of talking about it anyway?

But he didn't have to say it.

"Vincenzo, I know the difficulty you have with your mother," Rudy said gently. And before Vinnie could protest, "You weren't so circumspect the last time I saw you. The drugs loosened your tongue, and you had a great deal to say."

 _Are we talking about Sonny again?_ Vinnie had no idea what else he'd talked about. He only knew he'd been “less than circumspect” about Sonny because whenever one of their fights went on too long, Sonny would bring it up again, whatever Vinnie had said to Rudy—right before he slugged Vinnie for having said it.

"It doesn't matter," Vinnie told Rudy. He didn't want to talk about his mother. He’d been so angry with her, for reasons that made no sense to him now; he felt even more ashamed about that than he did the way he’d treated Rudy. Sure, Vinnie’d been doing it all for his mother, he’d been looking for Tommy Gallagher because she’d asked him to.

And when he’d come back, he hadn’t even been allowed to see his mother. Rudy had kept telling him it was better if he didn’t, better for her if she didn’t see him. That hadn’t made any sense to Vinnie; he knew she had to be worried about him. 

When Vinnie found the Mass card, he’d snapped. He’d understood what it meant: his mother thought he was dead. Once he knew that, it made even less sense to Vinnie that it was better for his mother not to see him. How could it be better for her to think he was dead than to see him the way he was. He remembered asking Rudy, “What way am I?” and getting no answer. From that he figured that whatever way he was, it wasn’t a way his mother would want him to be.

It had been all downhill from there.

Vinnie wasn’t sure how long it had taken before he’d understood, or when exactly it had happened. When Rudy found him, he’d been crazy, and he maybe wasn’t going to live anyway. What was the point of making his mother grieve him twice?

"May I tell you a story?" Rudy asked.

What could Vinnie say? He nodded.

Rudy poured himself some more tea. "You know I had a son?"

"Yeah, I remember. Danny."

"Danny,” Rudy agreed. “When Danny died, my wife died as well. Oh, her heart continued to beat, her blood to flow, she ate and drank and slept, but there was no life in her. We buried it when we buried our son." Rudy drank a little more tea, squeezed some lemon into it, drank some more.

"I loved my family more than anything in this world, Vincenzo. I believe I loved my son as much as his mother did." He sighed. "Perhaps not. There's no way I know to quantify a thing like that. Perhaps it was because I loved him less that I continued to live while my wife slowly faded away. Can you imagine what that was like, loving a woman who somehow blamed me for not loving our son enough, for not being ready to follow him with her into the grave? Can you imagine what it's like to love a woman whose eyes can't seem to focus on you, who can't seem to follow your words, who—" A deep breath, almost a sigh. A little more tea, half a cookie. Another almost sigh. "Once, I took her dancing, nearly three years after Danny's death. We had a wonderful dinner she didn't eat, and when they played our song, the first song we danced to at our wedding, she didn't remember it."

Vinnie could feel the hollowness of such a life. He picked up a cookie and began breaking it into small pieces on his plate.

"Her life—our life—no longer mattered to her. And what could I do? I was a widower long before my wife joined our son. I was lonely for a very long time."

"I'm sorry," Vinnie said, trying to sound—trying not to sound—trying. Rudy smiled at him.

"You're angry at your mother for surviving your death. You think if she really loved you, she wouldn't be able to go on living. Did you feel that way when your brother died?"

Vinnie shook his head. He hadn't. He'd been relieved that his mother handled Pete's death as well as she had. And that wasn't exactly why he’d been pissed at his mother, but he let it pass.

"I don't know if your mother doesn't love you as much as my wife loved our Danny, or if she is simply more like me, or if perhaps it's the same thing. I don't know if my wife was somehow a better parent than Carlotta is, a better parent than I was. I don't know. I don't care. Because what I do know is, when I look at your mother, she looks back at me. She sees me. When I speak to her, she hears me, she answers me, and when I take her dancing, she hears the music, and she laughs. Your mother is alive. If still being alive when your children have died somehow makes you a bad person—I tell you frankly Vincenzo, I don't care. I don't care. Let your mother not be an angel, I prefer a woman, a living woman, to an angel who doesn't live in the same world with me, and if someone needs to forgive her imperfections, I forgive them. I believe you understand what I mean."

Vinnie nodded, determinedly not smiling. _Yeah, I understand. Who wants perfection if you can have love instead? And who would have expected Rudy to compare his relationship with my mother to my relationship with Sonny, even obliquely? That right there is worth the price of this trip._

"Perhaps if you were a child, I would feel differently. But you're a grown man, Vincenzo, you can live without your mother. And perhaps you'd be happier if you were living without resentment for her in your heart."

"It’s all right," Vinnie agreed. “I haven’t been angry with her for a while now. What I was mostly was hurt, but I got over it.”

Rudy smiled at him. “Good.” He took another cookie. There was an easy silence between them, and Vinnie felt that they could sit like this until night fell on this expensive beige room, without things ever becoming uncomfortable. Vinnie ate a cookie, drank some tea.

"I know you didn't come here to talk about your mother," Rudy said. And that was all he said, he didn't ask.

And besides the comfortable silence, Vinnie also found that he liked this quiet, round-about way of talking, almost as though both their lives were hypothetical and nothing they said was real. It was very soothing. "No, I didn't. I came here for a couple of things. The first is to apologize."

"For?" Rudy asked.

_Yes, that's the question, isn't it? I can't really apologize for disappearing into the night with Sonny because that wasn't a decision so much as the next part of a hallucination I'd been having for who-knew-how-long. I think part of me really expected that I'd to go to sleep and wake up back in my own bed again._

_No, what I gotta do is apologize for was not talking to Rudy once in all the times Sonny called, for ducking out on my responsibility._

And Vinnie realized when his culpability in the matter had really started: when Sonny'd made that first call to Rudy. They were at O'Hare, and Vinnie was leaning against the side of the phone—not booth, just a phone with those two little panels, one on each side for "privacy." Vinnie was leaning against one of the panels, drinking a vanilla milk shake, listening while Sonny talked but not really listening to what he was saying.

"I know you're tracing this call, I don't care—" Vinnie could hear Rudy yelling. He offered his shake to Sonny, who took it, drank some, handed it back to him. He put his hand over the mouth piece. "Go get another one," he whispered to Vinnie, and smiled approvingly when Vinnie came back with two more. It didn't seem as though he'd said anything while Vinnie was gone, that he'd been waiting all that time to get a word in edgewise. He put his hand back over the mouthpiece. "You wanna talk to him?" Vinnie shook his head. At that moment, the most intelligent thing he could think to say was, "I found a place that makes delicious vanilla milk shakes." Rudy was already yelling at Sonny. Vinnie didn't feel like having Rudy yell at him, too. Maybe he could add that: "Stop yelling at me. Stop yelling at Sonny."

That was it, when he'd stood there not wanting to be yelled at, and letting Sonny take the heat. Not that Sonny had seemed to mind—in fact, he always seemed to enjoy it. And why not? How many guys got to take on God himself and come out unscathed? And what did he care if Rudy yelled at him, Rudy wasn't his—mother's husband. They stood there like a couple of kids, drinking their shakes and grinning at each other; they might have been doing nothing more than playing hooky the way they'd used to.

When Sonny had finished with his shake, he'd told Rudy, "Look, here's what it boils down to. You may think he's yours, but I got prior claim." And he slammed the phone down. Then he handed Vinnie his empty cup. "Get rid of this trash." And when Vinnie had, they'd gone back to where they'd parked the car, and left Chicago. That was the closest Vinnie had come to talking to Rudy since he'd snuck out with Sonny.

His sin against Rudy was even worse than his sin against Frank because he could more easily have righted it. Now it was time to own it. "I'm sorry to for letting you worry when there was no reason to. I should have spoken to you myself, when I was able to. I don't suppose it makes any sense, but for some reason I was as afraid of you as I was of the guys that grabbed me. I was afraid you were going to have me locked up."

Rudy's left hand covered his right. "You were right to be afraid of that. I was considering it. I had run out of sensible options, and I suppose that, unlike some people, I lacked the nerve to try an option that was . . . ."

Vinnie smiled. "Crazy? There are some people who just gravitate to crazy ideas. You had no way of knowing how afraid I was of being locked up."

"I knew what you had been through," Rudy said gravely.

"No, it wasn't that, I wasn't—I knew the difference between where I'd been and where you wanted to send me." Vinnie stopped, drank some tea, then began telling Rudy about what had happened after he was hit by the car, the whole thing with his foot, and Daryl, and Patrick, and the drugs. He omitted his dreams about Sonny. They weren't mentioning Sonny's name, after all. "I was afraid if you had me locked up, it would be that same experience all over again, only without Frank to come and get me, that they'd just keep pumping me full of drugs, and denying everything I told them was real, and maybe start running electricity through my head."

Rudy nodded gravely. "And you were in no condition to explain that, to me or anyone. Of course you ran when you got the chance."

"I'm not sorry I ran, but I am sorry I didn't face you." Vinnie took a deep breath, staring at the little plate with the pieces of cookie on it. There were still moments, moments that seemed perfectly normal, when tears seemed very close to the surface. He did not want to cry, not because he thought Rudy would think badly of him, but because he didn't want to use his emotions to say what he needed to say with words. Vinnie took another deep breath, worked at getting himself under control while Rudy waited patiently. "I was so ashamed. I've felt like such a coward all this time, I just couldn't face you, not even over the phone." Rudy's hand squeezed his, and Vinnie looked up to meet his eyes. "And besides saying I'm sorry, I wanted to thank you."

Rudy did not ask. He waited, patiently.

"For looking for me, for finding me, for looking after me." _For Sonny._

Rudy just looked at him, just accepting, easily.

"For being a father to me. I haven't been very—"

"Sons aren't loved because they're perfect, either," Rudy interrupted kindly, "or because they're brave, or because they're grateful."

They sat quietly and finished the cookies, and the tea. The room was getting dark as Rudy broke the silence to say he had to be going. Carlotta would be home soon, and they were going out to dinner, then to the movies.

“She’ll enjoy that,” Vinnie said. He turned on the small table lamp, and they stood up.

“Yes, she will,” Rudy agreed, and hugged him, expecting Vinnie to say goodbye to him there, but Vinnie walked down to the lobby with him, and waited while his car was brought around.

“Do you need money?” Rudy asked. Vinnie wanted to laugh; the last thing he needed was money. But it was the age-old father's question to a son, and it had nothing to do with money.

Vinnie shook his head. “Nah, I’m good—”

Rudy was taking out his wallet anyway, and Vinnie didn’t argue with him. You didn’t argue with your mother when she told you to eat, and you didn’t argue with your father when he said you needed money. Rudy gave him a twenty dollar bill, a token amount that made Vinnie grin like an idiot. “Thank you,” he said softly, and hugged Rudy again, trying not to laugh, or cry, failing a little at both, but maybe Rudy didn’t notice.

His car pulled up in front of the hotel. “Have a good life, Vincenzo.”


End file.
